Post-election the Michigan Tea Party continues to try to flex its muscle

It's Just Politics with Zoe Clark and Rick Pluta for Friday, November 16th, 2012

Before we get down to pure-politics this week, we want to first take a moment to remember former Michigan First Lady Helen Milliken, who just passed away. She was married to Michigan’s longest-serving governor, Bill Milliken, thus, making Ms. Milliken the state’s longest serving first lady. She was not a woman content to simply stand in the shadow of her husband’s accomplishments. She was part of that generation of first ladies, embodied also by Betty Ford, who made it clear that even though they were married to their husbands, they had their own opinions, their own causes, and their own accomplishments.

First Lady Milliken was an advocate for the arts, for environmental causes, feminism and abortion rights. She was an ardent enough activist in her own right that when Michigan environmentalists wanted to recognize environmental activism they named it the Helen and William Milliken Distinguished Service Award. She exerted some influence in making those Bill Milliken’s priorities, as well, even though at times it put both of them at odds with the more-conservative elements of the Republican Party.

And, interestingly enough, this brings us to the current Republican administration. There are some tensions between Snyder-Republicans and the right wing of the Republican Party, especially the Tea Party. The Tea Party continues to send the message that it is not planning on going away, that it’s going to continue to push Republicans in the most-conservative direction possible. And we’re really seeing this play out with two particular issues right now in Michigan: health insurance exchanges and right to work.

The politics of the Exchanges

The health insurance exchanges are the online marketplaces where people and small businesses will shop for health insurance under Obamacare. Like Orbitz or Travelocity, but for health insurance. Basically, Michigan has three options: a state-run exchange, a federally run exchange, or some type of hybrid. Governor Snyder and a lot of business groups wanted a state exchange. But, all year-long, state House Republicans kept saying, “No, not yet.”

First House Republicans wanted to wait for the U.S. Supreme Court decision on the constitutionality of the Affordable Care Act. When that didn’t go the way they wanted, they said the state should wait for the November election and see who’s elected president, with the idea that if Governor Romney was elected, then Obamacare would be repealed and the health insurance exchanges would be a moot point. But, as we know, that didn’t go the way they wanted either. And, now, they’re still dragging their feet, saying they still have more questions.

All of which raises more questions: what have House Republicans been up to and why can’t they make a decision after all this time? Especially with federal deadlines looming? Well, the Republican chair of the state House Health Policy Committee, Gail Haines, seems to have an answer. She says she’s not too concerned with federal deadlines, “Deadlines have really not meant a tremendous amount in this process,” Haines says. And, there’s something to that. Just today the Obama administration once again moved its deadline back for states to decide whether to run their own exchanges.

This almost month-long extension will give Michigan policymakers more time to decide what to do next. But, it’s perceived in some quarters as a back-down by the Obama administration, still trying to get a few straggler states to join in. It also gives the Tea Party another month to keep up the pressure on lawmakers to adopt a policy of total non-cooperation with the healthcare law. The Tea Party is betting that Obamacare will fail, that it will collapse, especially if states don’t cooperate. The election may be over, but the Tea Party is saying: No surrender. No cooperation.

The politics of Right-to-Work

But, unlike Obamacare, where the Tea Party says there is no mandate, in another case, the Tea Party is saying: heed the results of the election. In this case, they’re saying don’t ignore what happened November sixth. In this regard, they argue that the election does signal the direction the state should take on right to work. (Because consistency is a lot to expect of anyone; particularly politicians).

Michigan voters rejected Proposal Two – the ballot question that would have put union rights in the state constitution and Tea Partiers are pressuring Republicans to accept that as an invitation to pass a right-to-work law and send it to Governor Snyder.

Governor Snyder, however, keeps saying he doesn’t want that, even though he won’t say outright what he’d do if a right-to-work bill actually reached his desk. He simply says it’s not on his agenda, which seems to be a political word game. A game we don’t have the answer to. Is it a message to unions: Play ball or it could be worse? Is he trying to set some boundaries on antagonizing the Tea Party elements in his party? He does, after all, want to be re-nominated in less than two years. And, so, he’s got to strike a balance. He’s certainly not a traditional Republican – he is more of a Milliken Republican – in what is still a right-centered – as opposed to a center-right – Republican party.

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It’s time for a post-mortem edition of It’s Just Politics and, as the saying goes, it’s time for political reporters to come down from the hills after the battle to bayonet the wounded. Are your blades sharpened?

All six of the state’s ballot questions were voted down with a majority of “no” votes. “No” was what the people who put Proposal One on the ballot wanted – voter rejection of the state’s super controversial emergency manager law. That was bad news for Governor Rick Snyder. Public Act Four was one of the first laws he signed as a big supporter of tough medicine for cities and school districts that find themselves in big financial trouble. The Governor’s chosen candidate for U.S. Senate, former West Michigan Congressman Pete Hoekstra, lost to incumbent Democratic Senator Debbie Stabenow. His endorsement didn’t seem to do Mitt Romney much good in Michigan either. But still, he’s a happy guy… you can’t keep this nerd down.

In fact, the Governor has five reasons to be happy: Proposals Two through Six went down in defeat, just as he wanted. It’s pretty interesting to note that after millions and millions of dollars were spent – on both sides of the proposals – that they all went down by pretty large margins. Proposal One made a race of it. But we just have to wonder if it didn’t get pulled down by the “just say ‘no’” campaign waged by Snyder, business groups, and many Republicans.

On the very top of the ticket, however, voters said “Yes” to Democrats. For the sixth time in a row, Michigan voted for the Democratic candidate for President. And, the Obama machine was just that – a machine. Data-driven, organized and relentless. Republicans thought they had a shot at Michigan – never happened. Meanwhile, as we mentioned, incumbent Senator Debbie Stabenow won a third term in the U.S. Senate. The GOP thought they had a shot at the seat. Never happened. Pete Hoekstra never seemed to recover after the China Super Bowl ad debacle. He won the primary, true, but his campaign never picked up steam.

It’s so close, we can smell it: Election Day. Three days away. And, apparently, three was the magic number this week as three presidential polls in Michigan were released.

The Detroit News got political pundits talking with a Glengariff poll that showed Mitt Romney and President Obama locked in a battle for Michigan. The point spread was three points, inside the margin of error. This had Republicans saying, “It’s a race here in Michigan!” To which the Obama campaigned responded, “Not so much.”

“With all due respect, I don’t think The Detroit News poll reflects where this race is in Michigan, and everything we see, all the data we get suggests there is a wider gap there,” concluded Senior Advisor to President Obama, David Axelrod. In fact, Axelrod is so confident of a Michigan-win for the President that he says he’ll shave off his mustache if Democrats don’t take the state’s 16 electoral votes. Republicans responded by dropping off a razor and shaving cream at the Obama headquarters in Lansing.

But, since then, two other polls seem to support that Michigan still leans Obama. EPIC MRA did a survey for The Detroit Free Press that showed President Obama with a slight lead – 48 to 42 percent, the same as earlier polls. But, that still means the president is below 50 percent. Undecideds are still making a difference. Finally, a new Public Policy Polling survey showed the President with a commanding 53-45 lead in the state, although it does show Governor Romney’s position has improved slightly since the last PPP poll.

Meanwhile, the Romney-affiliated Super PAC has ramped up its spending in Michigan, and the Obama campaign has bought ads in metro Detroit for the first time. But we’re still not seeing the levels of spending and attention that suggests Michigan is really a presidential battleground state. That's certainly not to say, however, that we don’t still have some battlegrounds in the state...

State Supreme Court candidates appear on the non-partisan part of the ballot with no hint of party-affiliation, except if a candidate is an incumbent. But these justices are initially nominated by political parties at conventions. It’s slightly bizarre. The idea was the political parties would do the initial vetting, but then the candidates – and the Supreme Court – would be independent of partisan influence. As a matter of fact, an incumbent Supreme Court justice can nominate himself or herself without having to win at a party convention. Justice Charles Levin used to do that that until he retired in 1996. However, this hasn’t happened since, largely because of money.

The Supreme Court nominees don’t get the benefit of straight-ticket voting. But they do get all the other benefits of major party nominations. The Republican and Democratic parties and their kindred interest groups spend millions of dollars to get their candidates elected to the Supreme Court. Those kindred interests are business groups, the insurance industry for Republicans; the trial bar for Democrats. The campaigns go largely unnoticed, but they’re fierce, even personal sometimes.

There was the “sleeping judge” ad in 2008 that depicted then-Chief Justice Cliff Taylor as someone who slept through arguments (which wasn’t true). The ad helped make Taylor the first sitting justice to lose his job in an election in something like a quarter century. One year, Republicans ran an ad against a Democrat that showed this shady character’s shifty eyes and said as a judge, he favored lenient treatment for all kinds of horrid criminals. And, just this year, Michigan Democratic Party Chair Mark Brewer said Republican Justice Stephen Markman would be sympathetic as a judge to Jerry Sandusky, the assistant Penn State coach charged with child molestation.

With just 25 days to go before the Presidential election, and a week since the first Presidential debate, a few pollsters and at least one analyst are putting Michigan into swing-state territory even though, as we’ve noted before, President Obama’s generally been given the edge in most polls in the state.

This week, Michigan enjoyed a round of visits from top flight presidential candidate surrogates starting with Republican Vice Presidential nominee Paul Ryan on Monday. And, just today, we saw Anne Romney stumping for her husband, Mitt Romney, in the couple’s native-state.

So, the question remains, after five presidential election cycles with Michigan falling into the Democratic column, is Michigan an actual battleground state in 2012?

The right-leaning website Real Clear Politics says so. A Detroit News/WDIV poll shows the Obama lead shrinking since last week’s debate and a Gravis Marketing poll also puts the race for Michigan’s 16 electoral votes much closer than it has been. President Obama still leads, according to these surveys, but the momentum is moving toward Mitt Romney.

And, as we’ve said before, Michigan seems like it should be attainable for the GOP. It’s not like a Republican can’t get elected here statewide. Just ask Governor Rick Snyder, Attorney General Bill Schuette or Secretary of State Ruth Johnson.

But, aside from the Real Clear Politics call, no one else is really putting Michigan into that list of eight or nine states that are the focus of the fiercest competition (states like Ohio, Virginia, Colorado, New Hampshire, Nevada and Iowa). And, we’re certainly not seeing a big re-allocation of resources by the campaigns that would suggest things are changing in the mitten state.

One question that gets bandied about is: if Michigan isn’t a battleground state, then why are high profile campaign surrogates making regular stops here? Well, there are lots of reasons why candidates and their surrogates visit a state – fundraising, a quick visit to make sure a safe state stays that way. But President Obama hasn’t been here since April; Romney since August. In fact, this was the first time in decades that neither presidential candidate themselves visited Michigan during the entire month of September. In 2004, George W. Bush made John Kerry work for Michigan, which maybe meant he wasn’t able to spend as much time and money in places like Ohio and Florida – true swing states with lots of electoral votes.